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Ambivalence in Pregnancy and Childbirth

Maternal ambivalence occurs during all phases of mothering. Today I want to focus on the beginning--ambivalence about having children in the first place. For many years, in my career as an analyst, I assumed that deep down all women wanted children. During the last 15-20 years I have seen a number of women who were deeply uncertain about whether or not to have children, women who consulted me late enough in their lives that successful pregnancy and childbirth would have been difficult, or impossible, to achieve. Although their psychological profiles differed greatly, there were striking issues in common. Most of them liked the children of their sibs and close friends, but feared they would not like their own. Others had husbands who didn't want children, but this never turned out to be the real reason.

What I think of as the "real reasons" women are ambivalent about having children relate to several fears dating from early life. Women who struggle with a lot of unresolved aggression in themselves, fear that their child will become an angry reflection of the "monster within" them, or within their closest relatives-parents, siblings, spouses. Others, who for a variety of reasons are ashamed of their female anatomy and gender may avoid pregnancy and childbirth, the sine qua non of womanhood. A third reason for avoiding having children goes back to the early childhood of many women who were overly attached to their fathers. In their unconscious fantasy life, stemming from childhood, the baby is an Oedipal baby, father's baby, an illegitimate child who will bring punishment in its wake.

However, the major issue at play in the conflict over having children is the mother's relationship with her own mother early in life. Traumatic interruptions in the early mother-child bond, due to illness, physical or mental, separations, or family problems may leave their mark in a woman's later fear that she will not be able to mother adequately. These issues are not easy to get to in psychotherapy, but if a woman does not wait until it is too late, she may be able to resolve them and undertake motherhood, successfully.

Your overarching angle, though, is that wanting to have a child/children is normal for all women and anything deviating from that is a hangup to be understood or overcome. There may be many women who have emotional difficulties with the very idea of becoming pregnant and having a child, but there are also women (perhaps statistically a small slice, but who do exist) who have never wanted to have children, and feel no conflict about it.

I am one such woman. I can elucidate if needed the reasons behind this (early childhood operations and a fear of the body becoming deformed through pregnancy), but also it is a rational choice, or if not rational, something really felt as a non-issue. I don't like the idea of having a child to care for. I am a deeply caring person, but I would rather turn that love and attention to my partner and give him my love and attention. All studies show, I've noticed, that children are disruptive to a couple's life. I don't want to shift my sexual, romantic, enthralled love from my wonderful man (and I am also a very sexual woman) to the nurturance of a baby and then a child. It's just not how I'm wired. It's not what I'd rather do with my life, time, resources, and money.

I don't mind this in the least. The only time it's ever been a problem was when I was in a long-term relationship (ended years ago; I am in a different serious relationship now) where my fiancé adored and wanted children. I knew that down the line this would become an increasingly pressing issue between us; he would get angry when I said that that was not something I was willing to do. Fortunately, for other reasons, we split up before we were married.

i am not trying to pathologize the decision to not have ch8ildren. I am talking about those women who are troubled by their difficulty making a decision, particularly a negative decision. If a woman doesn't want children and is comfortable with it, it is in no way a pathological situation.

Actually, you *are* pathologizing the ambivalence here, which is strange given the content of your recent book. You say these three unresolved psychological neuroses are the "real reasons"—but what about such societal/cultural causes of ambivalence such as 1) not sure I have enough money to rear a child, 2) not sure I have a loyal partner with whom to do it, 3) not sure I can withstand having my career derailed temporarily or permanently, 4) not sure I can withstand the unmitigated social pressure to be better than Winnicott's "good enough mother," 5) not sure I can withstand the social isolation, lack of proximate extended family, and lack of support in American culture for mothers—and so on, and so on. You've actually WRITTEN about these very clear sociological causes for ambivalence, which are not neurotic in the least but are in fact quite practical—why would you suddenly get all reactionary and Freudian here? I'm disappointed in this post; you're usually a much clearer thinker.

Actually, you *are* pathologizing the ambivalence here, which is strange given the content of your recent book. You say these three unresolved psychological neuroses are the "real reasons"—but what about such societal/cultural causes of ambivalence such as 1) not sure I have enough money to rear a child, 2) not sure I have a loyal partner with whom to do it, 3) not sure I can withstand having my career derailed temporarily or permanently, 4) not sure I can withstand the unmitigated social pressure to be better than Winnicott's "good enough mother," 5) not sure I can withstand the social isolation, lack of proximate extended family, and lack of support in American culture for mothers—and so on, and so on. You've actually WRITTEN about these very clear sociological causes for ambivalence, which are not neurotic in the least but are in fact quite practical—why would you suddenly get all reactionary and Freudian here? I'm disappointed in this post; you're usually a much clearer thinker.

The only difficulty with the decision I am having comes from all the pressure from society to have one. Also, the common reaction from people that it must stem from some unresolved issue. The bottom line is I just don't. I could name at least 100 reasons. But when it comes down to it. I simply don't, much like someone that didn't want to go to medical school or that has no desire to start their own business and dedicate their lives to that. That reason doesn't seem to be enough for others... At times I have to give myself pep talks so that I can continue to be true to myself.

I have three children, I was ambilivant about it, but felt pressured by my then-husband. After making the three children he wanted, he decided that it was too demanding being a parent, then took off with nary a word or dollar sent our way since. Now I am left dealing with what he wanted, (I'm a good mother to them though, I guess they've grown on me!). I've yet to see any person questioning why a man does not want children, or why one would abandon his children, but God help a woman who does either. My sister does not want children, but is told at every turn that she will eventually, because "all women do". None of my three brothers have children, and are totally respected and supported for it. What gives? Given the biological drives, men should be out making lots of babies, while women should be more choosy, because the financial, physical, and psychological burden falls to us. But society forces are the exact opposite. If you want them, have them, if you don't, don't! I believe the old pro-abortion slogan was "Keep your beliefs out of my uterus" or something to that effect, I think it also applies to not having children.

Please spend a moment thinking about something you're not interested in doing. I'm not interested in football, so I don't go to football matches or watch football on TV. I'm also not interested in having children, they are two things I'm not interested in doing. There are more. I am interested in travel, food, politics and history.

My non-interest in football isn't due to some traumatic episode in my childhood or some repressed aggression (as far as I'm aware). My brother also isn't interested in football, so I could check with my mum about this to see if there is some family history of not being interested in football. But it seems like too much bother, besides I'm quite happy with my non-interests because they don't interest me.

I think the service this article provides is to point out that maternal ambivalence is affected by many factors, and that some of them stem from psychological circumstances relating to how a woman feels herself able to succeed in the role of mother as a result of unresolved issues. I am a 26 year old grad student and I have always been on the fence about having children for pretty much every reason, the two biggest ones being from either side of the pathology debate.

On the one hand, my younger brother is autism-spectrum and was epileptic during childhood, the causes of which have never been determined; his doctors don't know if he was born with these disorders or if they were caused later. Since we don't know if his condition is hereditary, I have no idea if I carry a gene or propensity for autism or epilepsy and what my risk is for having a child with these disabilities. I am career-minded and would not be in a position to practically care for a child for several years which also dissuades me, as my mother was in her mid-30s when she had my brother and a mother's age amplifies her risk for fetal abnormalities.

On the other hand, I have struggled with depression my whole life. It is a combination of family history and my own personal experience, notably with my relationship to my mother. I love her dearly and harbor immense guilt for feeling the way I do, and by all accounts she gave us the best life possible, but I always felt that she was annoyed by me, that my personality was unforgivable and my interests abnormal and wrong. I am her first child and I was planned for but as a result of what I can only describe as a timid nature encountering an aggressive, directive same-sex parent, I have had great difficulty convincing myself that I deserve to be happy. I feel more comfortable when I am unappreciated and oppressed, forever trying to please someone for whom even my best is never enough, because it is the condition with which I am most familiar. I made some bad relationship decisions in the service of this feeling, which I projected onto my partners. (I am currently in a healthy relationship.) I group myself with the women whose greatest fear is that their child will become an angry reflection of the "monster within." I am terrified of the responsibility of motherhood, not because I don't think I could raise a self-sufficient and successful child, but that I would be powerless to escape the conditioning of my own childhood, the tendency to "revert back to what we know," to resort to manipulation, passive-aggression, and control to produce whatever outcome doesn't violate my barometer of acceptability.

There are other reasons I am resistant to the idea of motherhood, among them having no compulsion to be a biological mother as a way to fulfill "womanhood," the obvious financial and lifestyle strains, concerns about global overpopulation and sociopolitical turmoil, and a commitment to my work and adult relationships. But regardless of my reasons or how much thought I put into them, I haven't met a single person who found out about my decision (I don't bring it up unsolicited) and had nothing to say. It's usually a sneering "You'll change your mind," as if to say "No one gets out of this obligation. You're not 'different' or 'exceptional,' you have to fall in line with the rest of us." Up to this point my choice has been regarded as tentative (because of "youth") and malleable (because of "biological inevitability" or "You just haven't met the right guy"), and everyone assumes I will change my mind. I take umbrage to that because it assumes that I have not thought it through, that I'm just doing it for attention, or most insultingly, that I couldn't possibly have had jarring personal experiences that dramatically shaped the way I look at my entire life, a huge part of which is whether or not to have children.

Our culture delights in all manner of strong-arming people into conforming with what's seen as normal, and even well-meaning acquaintances will default to shaming, guilting, and excessive scrutiny of another's position in an effort to right what they perceive as a violation of their particular norms. Women are expected to want children because they have the plumbing for it and if they don't they'll either "change their mind" or there's something "wrong with them."

[It is the same for women who remain unmarried. In her recent article http://huff.to/IBhDAx , Eleanor S. Wells explains that when others learn that she has never been married, it is assumed that she is somehow damaged and, more tellingly, that no man has ever "chosen" her. It is never assumed that she has had past opportunities for marriage and simply turned them down, that she has personal standards that for whatever reason were not met by her suitors, and that her singleness simply does not make her feel less-than. The comments section reinforces this, with a male poster commenting: "Like it or not, single by choice or not, an older, never married woman represents a woman who has not been desired, wanted by a man for his wife." We are still so mired in the notion that a woman's worth is determined by her desirability to men and the validation of her existence by their judgment, and any deviation from this is not due to the woman's agency, but by some undesirable shortcoming. A woman's aversion to motherhood is seen as just such a shortcoming and again in relation to what service she can be to a man.]

There are cons to my choice to not want kids: I am at the point in my life where the decision to not have children might drive away a potential life partner who is ideal in every way but is set on being a parent. I could regret my decision after my fertility has ended and find myself in old age with no one to care for me. I could risk losing relationships with dear friends who go on to have children and adjust their schedules and social circles accordingly. It is my responsibility to consider every outcome realistically and at length in order to make the right decision for me and the child(ren) I could potentially bring into the world (children who never asked to be born), and if I ultimately find I have more power to be part of the solution to my problems and the world's by not having children, I should be allowed to pursue that life uninhibited by those whose lives would not be affected either way.

What people should keep in mind regardless of the reasons a person considers willful childlessness is that it is a decision worth the utmost scrutiny and that creating a child is the LAST commitment that should be rushed into.